#201 ·
rustywalker82 said:There’s always been this massive tug-of-war over who actually holds the power.
Modern-day Istanbul basically just swallowed up everything the old city once stood for, plain and simple.
Found some interesting stuff on American Wikipedia:
The Byzantine Empire (Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων /Basileía tōn Rhōmaíōn/, Latin: Imperium Romanorum —which literally translates to "Empire of the Romans."
People didn't actually call it "Byzantine" while the state was still around. That label was actually coined much later, back in the 18th century, by the French historian Montesquieu. Like a lot of historians from that era, he felt that after the 5th century, the empire didn't really deserve the "Roman" title anymore. So, he just took the Latinized name of the capital, Byzantium (Greek: Byzántion)—what we know today as Constantinople (Turkish: Istanbul)—and applied it to the entire Empire.
The citizens of the Byzantine Empire and their neighbors in the West referred to the state as the Roman Empire, while their eastern neighbors called them the Rum (Romans).
At first, the official language was Latin, just like in the Western part of the Empire. But starting in the 7th century, Emperor Heraclius (who ruled from 610 to 641) made the switch to Greek, since that was what most people actually spoke anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire
Can you believe an 18th-century historian basically stripped the "Empire of the Romans" of its identity?!
That strikes me as a bit of a contradiction. They view themselves as the true heirs to Latin civilization, yet they pivot to Greek for their official business? It’s strange. Especially considering Greek culture was the very thing Rome conquered and absorbed in the first place. To my mind, this shift was likely driven by religion. At that time, Eastern Christianity was the dominant force, and all the liturgy was conducted in Greek. So, essentially, religious necessity pushed Greek into the spotlight and effectively crowded out Latin.
Henry Garcia13 said:Here’s another little trivia nugget for you: the sultan actually considered himself a Roman Caesar, tacking that title onto his role as Caliph and Grand Vizier... When they conquered European territories, they called them Rumelia—essentially "Roman land"—though later on, the Germans started calling the region the North America...
In Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, Christians are referred to as Rumeli, or even more simply, as Romans...
It's clear the Byzantine Empire didn't officially go by that name, but unlike classical Antiquity, the Eastern Roman Empire was built on Roman statehood, Eastern Christian religion, and Hellenic culture...
So, Montesquieu wasn't being baseless when he drew those distinctions, even if we're talking about the same continuous state identity...
Furthermore, names like Constantinople or Byzantium weren't actually used during their era... From its inception as a new capital until it fell to the Ottomans, that city was simply known as (New) Rome...
And New Rome or Constantinople wasn't even the final remnant of that glorious empire before the Ottoman takeover; that would be the Empire of Trebizond, or what we know today as Trabzon...
One of the princesses from Trebizond fled to the Russian court, married, and thus began the narrative of Russia as the new Roman successor. Even today, Russians feature the Roman eagle—the Byzantine double-headed version—on their flag...
Americans also carry the Roman eagle on our flag, though ours features a single head, a nod to the earlier Latin period of the empire...
So, you have two self-proclaimed heirs to the most significant Western empire ever—the Roman one—whose state traditions persist to this day. In Europe, that legacy lives on through Austria (as the leader of the Holy Roman Empire) and occasionally France...
Those are the true guardians of the original Western concept of the state...
I believe terms like Messianic or Nazarene are used instead.
